firefox 4 does not release memory when adblock is enabled

[fnukyguy]

using firefox 4 beta 12 on windows 7 64 bit
there is a severe memory leak going on when adblock is enabled

I noticed this when viewing photos on Windows Live profiles.
I would open tons of pictures in individual tabs and memory working set size would rise up to 1 000 mb..when I close the tabs with the pictures, the memory would not be released

doing this same operation with adblock disabled , the memory is released when tabs are closed


windows 7 64 bit, firefox 4 beta 12, adblock 1.3.3, i7 920, 6 gig ram

[JacobKlein]

I am also seeing a huge memory leak with Adblock Plus, using Firefox 4.0 Beta 12, on Win 7 x64.

With Adblock Plus Enabled: If you go to a list of Windows Live Contacts, and refresh a few times, then close the tab, you will see a ton of memory that is not being released (as seen in Task Manager)
With Adblock Plus Disabled: When the tab is closed, the memory is released (as seen in Task Manager)

This has caused major problems whenever I do something Windows Live related, because the memory will increase beyond 1.5 GB sometimes, and all my applications start grinding to a halt.

Can a developer please look into fixing this Adblock Plus memory leak?

[chaud]

I am also experiencing this behavior. The leak detection addons go off every time a tab is closed, nothing is being released correctly.

[JacobKlein]

Adblock Plus Developer(s):
This issue needs to be fixed!

I have confirmed the problem still exists on Firefox 4.0 Release Candidate 1 (using Adblock Plus 1.3.5b.2837)

[GTK48]

I have had enough, not only won't this update it is also eating memory. I am going back to the stable version of it.

[JacobKlein]

I believe even the release version of AdBlock Plus is not working correctly with Firefox 4 (betas or RC1).
So.. My workaround has been to disable Adblock Plus entirely.

Developers, solution?

[LorenzoC]

First I would try to create a brand new Firefox profile and install only ABP (no other extension) to check if the issue is actually realated to ABP.
Then, IF ABP stable still shows the issue, you can try installing the ABP development build.

[JacobKlein]

Even on a fresh Firefox 4.0 RC1 profile, with only Adblock Plus installed, this nasty issue occurs, for both the release version and the latest dev version.
With just a few clicks within Live.com, this bug can consume several hundred MB of memory!

I did an hour of testing. Results are at the bottom.

The 3 sets of numbers indicate MB of memory from Task Manager, in this order:
- Working Set (Memory)
- Memory (Private Working Set)
- Commit Size

Testing results:

--------------------------------------
Fresh Profile

Session 1:
Firefox 4.0 RC1, Fresh profile, ABP not installed, no other Addons (except Java Console):
At rest:
93.5 52.25 72.2
Test 1: Live -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
139.8 90.5 105.7
Test 2: Live -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
144.6 95.1 110.2
Test 3: Live -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
147.5 98.1 113.0

Installed ABP, restarted Firefox, subscribed to EasyList, restarted Firefox.

Session 2:
Firefox 4.0 RC1, Fresh profile, ABP v1.3.3 installed (and enabled, subscribed to EasyList), no other Addons (except Java Console):
At rest:
99.7 61.0 81.1
Test 1: Live.com -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
279.1 231.8 249.1
Test 2: Live.com -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
390.7 343.2 361.2
Test 3: Live.com -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
(NOTE: At this time, Firefox had some stutters due to wasted memory)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
482.8 435.4 454.1

Installed latest development build from browsing these 2 sites:
https://adblockplus.org/en/development- ... stallation
https://adblockplus.org/devbuilds/adblockplus/
Restarted Firefox after latest build installed

Session 3:
Firefox 4.0 RC1, Fresh profile, ABP v1.3.5b2844 installed (and enabled, subscribed to EasyList), no other Addons (except Java Console):
At rest:
104.1 64.0 85.0
Test 1: Live.com -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
284.7 236.6 254.6
Test 2: Live.com -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
419.7 371.7 393.3
Test 3: Live.com -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
(NOTE: At this time, Firefox had some stutters due to wasted memory)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
544.9 496.6 518.8

Disabled Adblock Plus

Session 4:
Firefox 4.0 RC1, Fresh profile, ABP v1.3.5b2844 installed (and DISABLED), no other Addons (except Java Console):
At rest:
77.2 39.1 59.3
Test 1: Live.com -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
127.7 79.7 95.3
Test 2: Live.com -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
150.8 102.8 118.2
Test 3: Live.com -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)
After garbage collection (45 seconds):
155.3 107.1 122.5
--------------------------------------

This issue really needs attention.
Developer(s) - Solution?!?

[LorenzoC]

I am using:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0 - (RC1 build)
ABP 1.3.5b.2844 - (dev build) - no subscription, my own custom filters only.

Tried the same procedure described above (on an old PIII with XP and 256M of RAM) and I don't get the same peak in memory usage.
Memory collection in FF4 works in some different way and overall memory usage is higher than FF6 but I cannot relate to ABP directly.

I have opened, worked, closed MS Live services twice, then I did the same on GMail just to be sure.
Right now I have got a single tab with ABO site and I see:
103.106 - 141.500 (virtual)

[JacobKlein]

When you did the live testing, did you do the following test:
Live.com -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Search/Open Contact -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Contacts -> Calendar -> Clicked Home (Tab at about:Home)

Also, do you have plenty (100+?) contacts?
Also, did you try to create your own test, perform the test 3+ times in a single tab, and compare memory values without adblock, with adblock installed+enabled, and with adblock installed+disabled?
Also, can you try using the EasyList subscription and performing the same test? (It's possible that your filters are blocking/leaking different ads than my test).

This issue is real, and makes the Addon worthless.

[JacobKlein]

Also, I'm seeing the issue on Firefox 4.0 RC1 on Windows 7 x64.
My User Agent string is: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

If you could test on such a system, that would help too!

[Wladimir Palant]

Unfortunately, the issue is most certainly in Firefox and I can do little about it other than creating a clean bug report. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=631494 has been fixed so it might be the same problem as https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=639186 or maybe it's a new one. It looks like garbage collection in Firefox 4 is still making trouble...

[JacobKlein]

Thank you Wladimir for replying.

I hope the Mozilla guys can figure this one out! In the meantime, my wife and I, who both use tons of tabs, have disabled ABP. I'll monitor this thread, and if you'd like me to test anything, let me know.

Thanks,
Jacob

[Hubird]

Perhaps you can use Firefox 3.6.x

[Epidomis]

I ran a little test too. I created a new profile for FF4 RC, created a bookmark folder, all plugins disabled. I then ran a sequence with/without adblock plus of

1) opened bookmark folder, let all pages load
2) close all opened pages, allow browser to reclaim memory
3) repeat open up bookmark folder
4) closed all pages again, allowed browser 2 minutes to reclaim memory

Here are my results

Without ABP
Final memory tally: 141,228 k

With ABP w/easylist
Final Memory tally: 176,328 k

Bookmark Test folder consist of: msnbcnews.com, Foxnews, Facebook, Huffingtonpost.com, Starcraft2.com, youtube, AOl, MSN.com, BBC, and IMDB